Antenna designers are often forced to design antennas in a backward fashion. For example, because of the increasing public concern over aesthetics and the “environment” , antenna designers are typically required to build an antenna in accordance with a radome that has been approved by the general public, land owners, government organizations, or neighborhood associations that will reside in close proximity to the antenna. Radomes are typically enclosures that protect antennas from environmental conditions such as rain, sleet, snow, dirt, wind, etc. Requiring antenna designers to build an antenna to fit within a radome as opposed to designing or sizing a radome after an antenna is constructed creates many problems for antenna designers. Stated differently, the antenna designer must build an antenna with enhanced functionality within spatial limits that define an antenna volume within a radome. Such a requirement is counterproductive to antenna design since antenna designers recognize that the size of antennas are typically a function of their operating frequency. Therefore, antenna designers need to develop high performance antennas that must fit within volumes that cut against the ability to size antenna structures relative to their operating frequency.
Conventional antenna systems confined within predefined volumes, such as radomes, usually cannot provide for large beamwidths in addition to large bandwidths. In other words, the conventional art typically requires costly and bulky hardware in order to provide for a wide beamwidths and bandwidths, where beamwidth is measured from the half-power points (−3 dB to −3 dB) of a respective RF beam. Such bulky and costly hardware usually cannot fit within very small, predefined volumes.
Another drawback of the conventional art relates to the manufacturing of an antenna system and the potential for passive intermodulation (PIM) that can result because of the material used in conventional manufacturing techniques. More specifically, with conventional antenna systems, dissimilar materials, ferrous materials, metal-to-metal contacts, and deformed or soldered junctions are used in order to assemble a respective antenna system. Such manufacturing techniques can make an antenna system more susceptible to PIM and therefore, performance of a conventional antenna system can be substantially reduced.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a substantially compact antenna system that can fit within a predefined volume and that can generate relatively wide RF radiation patterns and increased RF bandwidth. Further, there is another need in the art for a compact antenna system that can be manufactured with ease and that can utilize manufacturing techniques which substantially reduce passive intermodulation. There is an additional need in the art for a substantially compact antenna system that can handle the power characteristics of conventional antenna systems without degrading the performance of the antenna system.